


An Idea of Synchrony

by honeynoir (bracelets)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bracelets/pseuds/honeynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romana decides to investigate the cracks, but something keeps her from doing it the way she had planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Idea of Synchrony

**Author's Note:**

> For [this wonderful ficathon](http://eleven-romana.livejournal.com/1959.html). 
> 
> Features: Romana, Eleven, Amy, little!Amelia, Aunt Sharon, Mandy, Liz X, Bracewell, Blanche Breen, Alistair, River, Francesco Calvierri, the Northovers, Rory, Dr Black, Craig & Sophie and OCs, and also contains frivolous, skientific usage of the chameleon arch/fobwatch technology, vortex manipulators, &c.
> 
> I've made Sharon the sister of Amy's dad, since she needed a last name.

  
**Leadworth, 1996**

 

_The Doctor will destroy the Universe._

_The cracks in time are the work of the Doctor._

_Silence will fall._

_The Pandorica opens._

She’d intended to stargaze, to take her new wellies for a walk down to the meadow, to lie down and let her mind wander. There had been a few clouds in the sky, and she had started to let it wander a bit prematurely, unfortunately, while waiting for them to pass. She must have taken a series of wrong turns unwittingly, because when a dog’s sudden bark brought her back to Leadworth and gravity and gusts of wind and an itchy woollen jumper, she found herself halfway up the street Sharon Pond lived on.

Perhaps, she thought, she should postpone the gazing and visit her. Sharon always had a nice selection of teas. She also had a pleasurably predictable way of dragging up every single piece of gossip she though would be of interest. If they were home. It was a holiday, after all. And Sharon… wasn’t always there as it was. Half the time it was as if she didn’t exist at all.

Wasn’t there something she really needed to talk to her about, something about her house, something about it that she had happened to notice… but what — a broken floorboard, a leaking tap? — no, she couldn’t remember the specific details right now. She’d just have to anchor her mind firmly, first, and it would all come back.

Romana rewrapped her scarf (whyever had she invested in such a long one?) and walked the way to Sharon’s house, her wellies making a rather loud noise on the asphalt, now that she was aware of herself.

There was something about that house that made her skin crawl, noises that sounded like whispers… and yet, there was something irrevocably alluring about it.

From the street, the house looked still. That didn’t necessarily mean it _was_ , though, she’d learnt. Sometimes they did things like that, the Ponds. Turned off all the lights and sat on a crooked bench in the garden, aunt and niece, wrapped in blankets and drinking hot chocolate. It was things like that that reminded the child that she had an aunt, Romana thought. She turned up the path.

_Emotionally, her first reaction was_ No! _Intellectually, she had to think about it._

_The Doctor, sufficiently enraged, could do a lot of stupid things. Well-meaning, he could still do a lot of stupid things. Nothing like this, though. He knew what would happen and he wouldn’t cause it. She might not know him anymore, but this was the TARDIS… the TARDIS. He would never. Not on purpose. But unwittingly… by mistake. It was possible, truth be told._

_And if not him — who? She would not stomp around like an inexperienced tot anymore. She would handle this responsibly. She needed to see without being seen._

 

“What was the diagnosis?”

“They said it must have been a migraine or something.” She’s feeling quite shaken, is still recovering from a shock she doesn’t know how she suffered. It’s midday and she has the tea and the earful at Sharon’s, the one she thought to have in the evening three days ago. Until she’d passed out in Sharon’s garden. It feels a bit odd being back here again, and at the same time it feels like she never left.

Thankfully, Sharon seems a bit shaken, too. “What do _you_ think?”

“There was a crash. There was.”

Sharon stares at her, automatically stirs her tea.

“I was at your door. My head started throbbing, and my heart skipped a beat — and then it made up for it by beating twice as fast. And there was some kind of pressure. I felt… crushed.”

Two days in the hospital. Warm blankets, the smell of disinfectant, scans and ultrasounds, fingers in plastic gloves prodding, endless questions. She had a sniffle. Other than that she was perfectly fine. Well, except for the dreams.

“Because you know,” says Sharon, and pales under her rouge. “Our shed…” She glances out the window, and Romana does the same. The shed is no more. Where it stood is now a pile of rubble, planks hastily pushed into some kind of stack, bent content set to the side. “And Amelia…” Sharon starts, but nothing more comes.

Romana rises, approaches the window, stares out at the remains. “What happened to it?”

“You tell me. The fence is whole. There aren’t any tyre tracks. It’s just…”

“Crushed.” The kitchen table is set with mugs and a pot of tea, with milk and sugar and shop bought ginger biscuits on a plate. Everything is spotless. And the shed is crushed.

“What’re you talking about?” Little Amelia stands in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. She’s holding a blue crayon.

“Nothing, darling,” says Sharon, drawing herself up visibly. She glares at Romana across the rim of her mug. “Romana’s had a bit of an accident, that’s all.”

“Is it about the shed?” Amelia purses her lips. “I know what happened to it.”

Sharon rolls her eyes. “Amelia! What did I say about bothering guests?”

Amelia doesn’t even bat an eyelash. Utterly determined, she looks up at Romana and says, “I want to tell you about my friend.”

“ _Amelia_!” says Sharon.

“It all right,” says Romana, trying to sound flippant. “I don’t mind.”

Amelia runs out of the kitchen, her hair flying, returns in but a moment carrying a small red suitcase. She plops down on the floor and places the case in front of her. Next she makes a demanding gesture indicating that Romana better sit down, too.

Romana leaves the window and obeys; sits down across from the child, tugging her legs into the lotus position.

Sharon makes an irate noise and clutches her mug, stares out into the garden.

Amelia solemnly opens the case.

Romana can’t see what it contains, wonders what to expect.

“This is me.” Amelia places a little thing with blazingly red yarn hair and a handkerchief for a dress on the floor. “This is my friend.” A slightly larger doll, made from an empty paper roll, with askew pieces of cloth for a shirt and trousers. Its yarn hair was brown and plentiful. Amelia makes very sure the doll is standing perfectly straight. “He’s called the Doctor.”

“How unusual…” says Romana. She’s starting to feel a little light-headed, all of a sudden.

“He doesn’t need a boring name. He’s magic.”

Romana peers closer at the doll. “Magic?”

“His box is magic too.” She reaches into the suitcase with both hands and smiles up at Romana, waits a few seconds before reverently retrieving said box. It’s vibrantly blue, if still obviously just a painted tea bag carton.

Romana’s heart skips a beat nonetheless.

“It has a library and a swimming pool and guess what? The pool is in the library!”

“Shouldn’t it stand up?” she manages, when Amelia has placed it on the floor. She really shouldn’t be this invested in a child’s game.

“It needs to have a lie-down while the engines are phasing.”

Romana presses a hand to her chest. “It crashed?”

Amelia sighs impatiently. “Yes. You see, he was in such a hurry to fix the crack in my wall. He didn’t stop in time and crushed the shed.”

Cracks in time… Romana suddenly feels nauseous. “A crack? He fixed it for you?”

“Closed it. Just like that. He’s got a wand.”

“The Doctor…”

“We met when Aunt Sharon went to London,” says Amelia brightly.

“Can I see your wall?”

“Absolutely not!” says Sharon, staring down at them. “Amelia has an unhealthy obsession as it is, don’t fuel it!”

Amelia turns a fierce frown on her aunt. “I’m not making it up!”

“Who are you to decide what’s unhealthy?” asks Romana quietly.

Sharon slams her mug down and a little tea sloshes over the rim. “There’s no such thing as raggedy men flying about in blue boxes.”

“What if there is?”

“It’s preposterous!”

“You should listen to Amelia, just for once. What if there is? What if he crushed your shed?” If she really thinks about it, Romana knows there is no such thing, that it is indeed preposterous. If she doesn’t think, however, she feels that she must defend this man and his box.

The phone rings, in another room. Sharon gets up and leaves the kitchen, her lips tightly compressed.

Romana hears her answer, wonders if she ought to go.

“I can show you my wall now,” says Amelia.

_She’d sat on a swing, stared up at the sky, wondered if there were planets where the grass was red. A great weight had pressed against her. She’d stumbled into a bush._

_Someone had draped a coat over her. She had looked up and it had been like looking in a distorted mirror. The face of the woman looking down on her was as familiar to her as her own face, and yet she knew she looked nothing like that._

It’s just an ordinary wall. Romana inspects it thoroughly, running her hands over it, though she has no idea what she’s looking for.

Amelia watches her, clutching her Doctor-doll. “No crack.”

Romana turns. “No crack.”

 

Amelia runs down the stairs; her aunt is off the phone and crying for her, decidedly angrily.

Romana takes it slower, thinking. She’s seen the wall; it’s normal, and still she isn’t pleased. Then she notices something: a door, and it is most certainly not normal, even though she can’t say what’s wrong with it.

She opens the door and peers in.

_What... is that? What is it trying to_ do?

Her watch… The emergency switch!

 

_With a little tweaking, the fobwatch will do nicely. She needs to keep her mind, but change her body. It may defeat the point of the Chameleon Arch, but she doesn’t care. She needs to be something other than a Time Lord, and yet she needs to think like one._

_She upgrades the perception filter, programs parameters for an infinite number of different projections, makes sure she can’t be a scientist every time. She’ll undoubtedly get to keep the appearance of her arms and legs, most of the time, thankfully. The Doctor and his beloved humans._

_Next, she gets hold of a vortex manipulator. She programs it to track the cracks, by way of the Doctor’s TARDIS, by way of the Doctor. It’s throwing caution to the wind, tying herself to his whims, but it’s necessary._

_She’ll have three months to examine each crack, and that will have to do. She adds an emergency switch, wires it to the manipulator; she is not spending a quarter of a year in any given (illusion of a) different body if there is nothing to investigate._

_…_

_A silence so complete it is a force, a presence; an actual substance invading her lungs and sticking to her skin… an actual something crushing her watch, inside and out, breaking and bending the precious technology… She takes the step, a motionless step into a nonexistent darkness, but it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Her control is not where it should be. Her mind leaks into the watch, just where it’s not supposed to go…_

 

 

**The Starship UK, 33rd century**

_A glass of water. Simple. And still… There is something wrong here, something much more tangible than cracks in the Universe. This ship built on a lie, a deck of cards that the right kind of pressure at the right place could bring down. But what? Why? Crying children, fire and fear and death. Last changes. A button saying protest._

Her nightmares are terrible, all-consuming things. She can’t concentrate on her work. Melancholia, they say. Travelling on a spaceship without a set goal — it’s common. She gets a few months’ leave, no questions asked.

_The Pandorica opens._

_Protest, protest, protest! Something screams at her: press that one, that one! But she doesn’t; her heart constricts in her chest and she presses the wrong one. And then she wakes up, but she doesn’t wake up properly._

_Something went wrong… she wasn’t supposed to be human, not this much… Malfunction, miswiring, sabotage._

_It was her choice. Wasn’t it? The manipulator, the fobwatch… of course it was._

She puts on her coat and her everyday hat, both grey and nondescript, and goes for a walk.

There are people everywhere, people just like her. They’re walking and eating and drinking, and somewhere just below the surface are all those things they cannot see; and those who do see choose to unsee, at least in her nightmares.

She stops by a water shop and gets some to go.

A glass of water. A hundred glasses of water. The terrible, impossible truth. They’re somehow connected. She tries to look deeper, but it’s like she can’t focus properly. Sometimes she feels the same way when she looks at herself in a mirror; like she’s not looking deep enough.

She finds a quiet street corner and puts the glass down. The water is just as immobile as it is in her nightmares.

Footsteps fall further down the street, heavy ones. She snatches the glass up and hunches between a pair of bins, pulling her hat rim down over her eyes, aims to become just another grey lump. A pillar of steam shoots up nearby, drifts through the air, obscures the whole street. Luck. The steps come closer, falter. Romana holds her breath. Whoever it is starts to move again, away from her. She leans out and peers through the steam, makes out a figure shrouded in black, soon engulfed by darkness.

She stands, disposes of the glass, dusts herself off and rights her attire.

Something red disentangles itself from the darkness that just swallowed the Winder. It shapes itself into a cape, which, in turn, gets caught by a draft and reveals a pair of boots and a porcelain mask.

_How intriguing,_ Romana thinks. Her hat just won’t go the way she wants it, or so she makes it seem.

The woman stops, at a respectful distance. ”Why are the Winders after you?”

Romana has to strain her ears to hear. She retaliates using the same tone. “Why are you after the Winders?”

“ _I_ asked first.”

Romana shrugs.

The woman squares her shoulders, approaches with measured steps, comes close enough to stare down at Romana. “Answer me.”

“I didn’t forget properly.”

“Forget what?” There’s a challenge in the eyes, very much alive behind the mask.

“I don’t know. Something I was supposed to… I suppose.”

”You’ve voted.”

”Yes.”

”Recently.”

”Yes.”

The woman drops her voice even lower. “Why did you do that with the water?”

“I won’t say. I don’t fancy meeting the Smilers.”

“Have you ever wondered if you voted right?” The woman chokes a fistful of air.

“Have you? No, of course not. You don’t vote.”

The eyes widen.

“You’re Liz X. Who else would you be?” Romana’s suddenly terrified of how bored she sounds. It’s the queen, honestly…

“You could work for me.”

“That’s not what I’m here for,” she says, even though she’s not sure what exactly she is here for.

 

_The button. Just the one._ Forget. _The feeling that something was wrong, that she was waiting in vain… She must watch from afar. She must find out the truth… the grain of truth… those rumours…_

When she’s been at home for exactly two weeks, there’s a knock on her door.

Romana gets up from the couch, rubs her eyes and opens the door with great reluctance.

On the other side is Mandy Tanner, one of her eleven-year-olds. She clutches a folder and smiles hugely.

Romana feels better already. She misses the class, really she does.

“Here are some pics,” says Mandy, holding out the folder. She drops her gaze. “Those that were accepted.”

“That’s very kind!” says Romana, speaking too loudly to somehow balance out the uneasiness. “Make sure you let the others know that.”

“I will.”

“Whose painting wasn’t accepted?” She has to ask. Has to know.

“I’m not supposed to tell.”

“Please!”

“Lisa’s… and Byron’s.”

“Thank you.” Romana tries to breathe through the spreading coldness, but it has affected too much of her already. “You should be going home,” she tells Mandy. “If you could come back in a few days, I’ll have something for you to bring the class.”

Mandy nods. “Miss,” she says. “You’re my favourite.”

 

She sits on her couch, wrapped in a blanket, flips through the paintings. She doesn’t really see them. Her eyes burn.

 

_The Doctor is there often; a faceless shape that she knows only by feeling, an old friend, so old… Someone who has perhaps made their greatest mistake ever. And that’s saying something._ She laughs to herself, inside the dream, and her sleeping body twists in the sheets.

_Errant memories fitting together in a semblance of sense. There are layers, so many. A translucent sheet upon another upon another. Blue and yellow make green. Green and purple make brown. Brown and blue make black, right? Black is all colours. There’s a sound like..._

 

When Mandy returns, Romana opens the door before she’s knocked.

“Are you all right, Miss?” asks Mandy.

“I’m fine.” She’s feeling positively beside herself. One part is so very tired, and the other is telling her to run, run, run, because the Winders… She’s got the class a film, though, a funny, harmless one, and she presses the card into Mandy’s hand.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“The Doctor will come.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m sorry… I’m very tired. Say hello to the others for me.”

Mandy stares at her, clutches the film card.

 

That night, or perhaps the night after that, her door opens — no, it’s _opened_ — and a handful of Winders swarm in. There’s a gas, and then there’s darkness, and a proper, deep oblivion.

 

Romana isn’t entirely certain she’s awake.

She’s in a voting room, on a chair, that much is clear. In front of her are the screens and the dreaded buttons. An open door reveals a tiny toilet cubicle, from which a pronounced smell of vomit issues.

The system recognises her alertness, scans her. ‘Frederique Dvora, 40’, it says. Is that right? That doesn’t seem right.

She shakes her head, doesn’t get up to vote. She’s scanned again, with the same result.

_She’s ephemeral, and herself (finally), and not herself at all, and all at the same time. It’s all very confusing. Perhaps it’s part of one great dream: a dream within a dream within a dream. There’s something intriguing in that; a scientific study; an equation; a bit of poetry._

An indeterminable amount of time later, the system has developed some sort of glitch. It scans her continually. Sometimes it won’t even recognise her right to vote. How ironic.

She pulls her legs up, watches the computer try to identify her.

The door opens, and a Winder enters with a bowl and a glass on a tray.

“You think I’ll eat that? You’ve drugged me once already.”

“The food’s safe. We won’t interfere with the voting.”

“How long have I been here?”

“A day. Please vote. You’re taking up an entire booth.”

_The Universe is cracked… There are cracks in time… the work of the Doctor…_

The Winder leaves.

Perhaps she didn’t have to occupy it any longer. If this was all a dream, she ought to take up her watch and push the button her finger itched to push.

She tries that.

_There’s a torrent of words in her mind… equations she can solve as fast as… and four dimensions. It — everything, all of it — rises to a terrible pounding crescendo and just when her skull feels like its going to give out it’s finally turned itself right and she’s got the answer on the tip of her tongue — and there’s silence. There’s darkness. There’s another dark room and another motionless step._

 

**London, 1941**

They’re all so pleased with the Ironsides, so… satisfied. She rarely feels anything at all for them, and what she on occasion manages are sharp bursts of revulsion, accompanied with a loathing so sudden she has to swallow or it’ll choke her. Most of the time, when she looks at an Ironside, she’s aware of nothing but a great white noise, something _too_ blank. Something in her chest is numb.

But, she considers, feelings and opinions are not the same thing, and her opinion on them is perfectly clear: they aren’t to be trusted, and they shouldn’t be there.

“What do you think of them?” she asks Blanche Breen one morning, when they’ve had to flatten themselves against the corridor wall to let an Ironside balancing a very large crate on its implements glide by.

Breen clutches her clipboard to her chest. “I just want this war to be over.”

Romana inclines her head. “Of course. Me too.”

“I’ve got signatures to collect.” Breen walks away, in the opposite direction of the Ironside, her shoulders just slightly slumped.

_Something is keeping her from doing what she should be doing. Someone is laughing at her, a sound felt rather than heard._

_It was ridiculous, really. She knew exactly where she wanted to go, when she wanted to arrive. Then something just nudged her a tiny bit off course. It was infuriating._

 

She enters Bracewell’s workshop one day, finds he’s left the appropriate blueprints handily out. She studies them, looks for… something. Something that doesn’t make sense, or some kind of weakness.

“You dislike them,” says Bracewell, suddenly behind her.

She drops the blueprints and whirls. “I’m sorry, Professor. I was just curious.”

He offers a sad smile. “You dislike them.”

“I don’t,” she says. She’s been on the radio all day and her throat is sore. She pokes an errant curl back into its pin. “They’re a remarkable feat of engineering.”

“If you want to, I’ll take you off the project,” he says, kindly.

She can’t imagine the Prime Minister being as kind. “I need this position.”

Bracewell places a hand on her shoulder. “How are you? Really?”

“I… Oh, sometimes it feels like I’ve forgotten half my life.”

“Ah, the memory is a peculiar thing,” he says. “I like to think, if it’s important enough, you’ll remember. In time.”

One can hope. But what about the things she’s certain she doesn’t remember _correctly_? The one thing she’d had to call her own had been an old watch, but she’d lost it. She can’t remember how that happened, since she’d been very, very tired at the time. It hadn’t worked properly. She has a vague memory of tinkering with it standing on her knees in a cupboard, working in the sliver of light shining in through the crack in the door, working against some sort of deadline, something to do with the Ironsides. That couldn’t be an actual memory, even if her knees had been sore. It must have been part of some mad dream. She has those, sometimes. They all do, to some extent. She probably hadn’t been able to fix it and thrown it away. Or donated it to Bracewell, perhaps, in which case it was now probably part of one of the Ironsides. Such was life. It was no more annoying than the fact that there was a perpetual ladder in her tights.

_  
She dreams of a magnifying glass, of herself as a sleuth. She puts on a helmet or a mask. The next moment there’s a fobwatch, a desire for knowledge, a step without moving… and then ordinary life._

The Prime Minister leads around the man he’s been waiting for, along with a Scotchwoman in something that is probably supposed to be a skirt. Another expert, doubtlessly. A man with a mad invention of his own.

Romana watches them for a while, the newcomers, when they’re in the Map Room together. She sorts papers, listens to Churchill go on about classified manoeuvres, watches him hand the man sheet after sheet of secret information. Breen has found a confidante in the woman, lets her sit next to her while she’s on the radio.

Then an Ironside enters. Most inventors would have taken every chance to get a good look at it, would have applauded Bracewell. This Doctor stiffens, watches the Ironside unblinkingly out of the corner of an eye, snarls at its back when it turns its eye in another direction.

“Doctor,” admonishes the Prime Minister.

Romana smiles at the folder she’s holding. Maybe she can have a confidant of her own.

 

Hours later, when she enters the Map Room again, the Doctor is still there. He leans against a filing cabinet and studies the great world map mounted on the wall. It’s nearly dawn, according to the clock.

The two women on duty are poring over a section of the table map. They’ve accepted this man quickly, just like they did the Ironsides.

Well, she won’t. She straightens her uniform and walks up to him. “You! Why are you here?”

He shifts against the cabinet, frowns. “Winston called me.”

“What horrors can you make?”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“You can make terrifying things, I’m certain.”

He looks down, momentarily, then pins her with a gaze. “Do you think these Ironsides are terrifying?”

“You don’t like them,” she states.

He twists his lip; it’s probably supposed to be a smile. “Do you?”

“They make my skin crawl.”

A peculiar light comes into his eyes and he leans forward, pitches his voice low. “They are evil! Spread the word!” He glances to the women by the map. “Make your friends doubt them.”

“Is it that simple? They’re evil?”

“They will turn on you. Trust me.”

She leans forward, too. “What makes you more trustworthy than them?”

He reaches for her hands, squeezes them. Whispers, “I am _not_ like them. Listen to me…”

 

The sun has barely risen when she sets foot on the rooftop, having left the War Rooms for a desperately needed breath of fresh air. The Doctor said all the things she wanted to hear. It couldn’t be that simple.

“Report!”

Oh, that voice. That utterly inhuman voice. She turns to face the Ironside. They’re everywhere down there, and now there’s one on the roof as well.

“Report!”

“Pardon?”

“Report on the plans of the Doctor!” It comes closer and closer, its eye trained on her face.

“Stop it! Why should I report anything to you?” She almost smiles; she was right about them. The Doctor was right, too. It was all true.

“We made you our spy! The device around your waist! We made it, the android installed it!”

She pulls her jacket up and there is indeed something around her waist. The sort of thing one would notice, no? It’s a selection of odd-looking technology fitted onto a belt and cross-wired. And there, in the middle of it, is her watch, the one she’d lost. The one she’d thought she’d lost. She presses a hand against it; it’s been integrated, butchered. There’s an ugly crack in it.

“You are our spy!”

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, and those are not her words. They seem to land readymade on her tongue, coming from somewhere else. It’s not her voice, either, not her proper voice. It speaks much too loudly and much too fast.

The white noise is mutating, changing; becomes cold flames. The sensations are not comparable, but that’s what it feels like. The revulsion is there, too, but most of all she’s angry. No, she’s fuming, she’s livid, her rage grows by leaps and bounds… she’s so furious there isn’t a word to describe it. _What hate looks like..._

“Report! Report!” The Ironside raises its gunstick.

She lifts a finger from the watch and brings it down again, tapping just _so_.

 

 

**The _Byzantium_ , 51st century**

It’s a party, and she’s not in the mood for partying. She likes the dress code, though, and her dress - all flowy and pearly and so blue - is definitely the best one. She isn’t quite as pleased with the hair; the gel just won’t hold, sending her bangs into her eyes. But still.

It was too bad, really, that this was the kind of thing she had to think about while on a perfectly good dance floor. She angles her foot and drives her heel down on her partner’s foot; the middle toe, she thinks.

Alistair’s grip tightens and he sucks in a breath. “Look where you’re putting your feet!”

“That was intentional,” she says. “If you have to lead, at least you can look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“You were looking at that woman over there. The one in the red shoes.”

“I,” he says, spinning her round, “have a reason.”

“I’m sure,” she says, using the momentum to angle her foot again. She’s thinking left little toe, this time. Just for fun.

When the dance is finally over and Alistair has limped away, she seeks out the woman in the red shoes. “Have you had the pleasure of meeting our host? Such a bore.”

The woman grins over the rim of her champagne coupe. “Several times, unfortunately.”

“He seems to be interested in you.”

“I’m sure he is. He’ll have other things to think about soon.” She smiles rapaciously, for a moment. Then she gathers herself, takes a sip of champagne.

“How interesting.”

“Isn’t it just.”

Romana grins. “Still, not enough to keep my attention. If only one could get off this ship.”

The woman turns serious. “There are escape pods.”

“Are you encouraging me?”

“Yes.”

 

 

**Alfava Metraxis, 51st century**

_She’s looking for something with a double pulse._

She decides she’s had enough of the cramped colony, hotwires her best friend’s bike and sets off. She has a desire to see a place, a certain place, even though she doesn’t know where it is or what she’ll find there.

What she finds, eventually, is a crashed spaceship, a lot of dust, and absolute silence. She tightens her jacket at the throat, shivers in the salty wind, feels vaguely disappointed and quite angry without knowing why.

 

**The Delerium Archive, 171st century**

She presses her nose to the glass and stares. Those carved squiggles. They speak to her, somehow, even if she rather feels like she’s reading someone else’s hyperpost. This box wants to tell her something, but what?

She slams her hand on the glass in frustration, which sets off an alarm and causes a gaggle of guards to surround her. It’s quite embarrassing, really.

 

 

**Venice, 1580**

_There are rumours. Something about those rumours cause her pain — did she spread them? No, surely not…_

She sits by the canal, dangling her feet just above the water, banging her heels against the stone. She’s resting for a moment, has placed her shopping next to her and turned her face to the sun. She picks petals off a marguerite, newly bought from a flower girl, watches them soar momentarily through the air before falling and landing in the water. She knows she’s supposed to say the words to go along with the picking, but they’ve escaped her mind.

Something about the water causes her discomfort, creeps up her spine and straightens it. There’s something strange about it, the way the surface churns. It is also the only reason she’s sitting there.

She’s been down to the market and bought some different fabric, imported from exotic places, dyed with foreign plants, smelling of freedom. She’d smiled at a funny man who’d smiled at her, nodded to an even funnier-looking couple.

She picks the last petal, lets what little wind there is catch it and lower it to the canal. The moment it touches the surface of the water, a deceptively soft step falls behind her. She turns her head to look; turns it back a mere moment later.

Rosanna Calvierri’s relation. Francesco. He’s taken to skulking about as of late.

"Careful,” he says quietly, coming to a halt next to her. “You might fall in."

“I can swim.”

He makes a noise that might be a laugh, hunches down and sits next to her, letting a proper distance separate them. He glances down at the water only momentarily, and keeps his feet perfectly still.

She bangs her heels even more forcefully. He fascinates her, a little. There is something wrong about him, something she should understand… something she _could_ understand, if only she had the time. They could have been performers on a stage, very much opposite one another, and still… it felt like they shared something, a secret.

He places his leather-gloved hand on her shoulder.

She leans back instinctively, transfers her weight, throws back her hands to steady herself. Then she stills, feigns calm; she can topple him into the water, easily. She could hit him in the head with her basket, if it came to that. “Is there a reason you chose my company?”

“My mother runs a school.” His voice is a bit rough, as if he hasn’t spoken much today. He looks quite unashamedly at her, leans closer and closer.

"I am too old for school." She shrugs her shoulder once, violently.

He draws back his hand and snarls, cradles it in his lap. His anger is practically palpable. “Surely not,” he says, “Surely…”

She suppresses a shiver, tenses her muscles. _His teeth_ … “I will not go to your school.”

He stares at her, snarls again. _His teeth, his_ eyes!

A shrill whistling cuts through the air, is soon accompanied by heavy, blusterous steps. Francesco falters, glances to the side.

She doesn’t take her eyes off him.

The steps grow ever louder and closer, the whistling becomes a tune. Francesco jumps up, tightens his cape. “Later, perhaps,” he hisses, and draws away, walking quickly, fiddling with his gloves.

The newcomer is another man — in fact, she realises, it’s the one she met at the marketplace; the funny-looking one. "Careful," he says. "You might fall in."

“I —”

“But you can swim, of course! You’re Venetian!” He sits down beside her, much closer than Francesco.

She has to smile, for some reason. She straightens, picks up the naked flower stem, crushed between her hand and the stone.

The man peers into the water; his gaze follows a particularly large petal. “Did I interrupt?”

“I thank you for it.”

He looks up, catches a glance at the stem, doesn’t quite smile.

A goat bleats loudly somewhere to the right.

She places the stem on the stone, suddenly regretting depriving it of its petals. Their sleeves brush, at the elbow.

“Venice,” he says. “Lovely place.”

His Venetian is somehow too perfect. She can't put a finger on it. “It’s too silent here.”

“With all this water? And there was a goat… ”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Venice is a lovely place. Would be a shame if it was lost. If it never were.” There is such acid in her voice she thinks her throat withers with it.

He frowns, narrows his eyes. Looks, but doesn’t stare.

“Forgive me, I… don’t know why I said that.”

“I won’t let anything happen to Venice,” he says, slowly.

“And still,” she continues, again in that acid-like voice, “the P…” She knows the words, but they won’t pass her lips. “The P…” _andorica will open._

He looks at her, but only skin-deep, and frowns some more, but what good will that do?

“Forgive me! I don’t know what’s come over me.” She rubs her throat, and her voice is the way it’s supposed to be again.

A gondola glides past, upsetting the floating petals. Its wake destroys everything, and all the petals are gone. The surface churns.

 

**Cwmtaff, 2020**

The air is different today, probably gearing up for a proper thunderstorm. There’s certainly some sense of lightning in the air, something that makes her neck hair rise.

She’s tired. Her dreams are dreary monochrome things, interspersed with jagged cracks, looking too much like grinning mouths. They wake her up, infallibly.

She intends to head into the village, for once. She’s quite curious to know why the drilling has stopped. It’s quite a long walk, but it’ll do her good.

The resident family is gathered on a blanket on the lawn in front of their house, all of them looking rather peaky. It would be just her luck to catch something.

“Oh, you’re still here,” says Ambrose Northover by way of greeting. Her voice is more brittle than usual. “We thought you’d moved.”

Her husband gives Romana a concerned look. “Are you all right?” _He_ certainly doesn’t seem quite all right; keeps rubbing his belly.

Ambrose reaches out and strokes her son's hair. "Shake the lady’s hand," she tells him.

“It’s fine,” says Romana. “We’ve shaken before.”

The boy scrambles to his feet, though, offers his hand and a smile.

She takes his hand; he has a firm grip.

Ambrose smiles, too.

Romana had met a new couple, just yesterday; a most welcome occurrence around here. They’d locked arms and seemed terribly giddy about something.

“Hello,” the man had said. “Nice weather!”

“It’s better when you’re not dressed for Rio,” the woman had added..

They seemed a nice couple. She hopes they’ll move in.

 

**Paris, 2010**

_The Starry Night_ is her favourite piece. It’s so… _free_. Still, no matter what work of van Gogh’s she’s viewing, she thinks about waiting tables in a starched apron… but that’s one of those things one just has to accept. (She has a similar problem at the Louvre.)

A choked sob tugs at her attention and she turns. There’s a crying man in the middle of the museum. That in itself isn’t unusual. The fact that the man looks exactly like Vincent van Gogh, however, is. A tall woman and a man in a bowtie comfort him, wrap arms around him, steer him out of the room.

She looks at them, and it’s like the floor disappears from underneath her, and suddenly she’s utterly, utterly furious. She’s _certain_ the man in a bowtie has committed some sort of crime, that he’s brought someone that truly shouldn’t be here. She stomps up to the nearest guide and grabs his arm.

“Hello!” he says, falteringly. “I’m Dr Black. Can I-”

“That man has broken the law!” She uses her free hand to point at the disappearing backs of the three people.

He raises a brow and she can see that he recognises them. “The man with the bowtie, or the… other one? In which way?”

“Bowtie! He’s… stolen something. He’s stolen… He’s taken it out of time!”

“Your hand… Could you?”

She removes her hand and apologises, just as the three disappear from view completely.

Dr Black glances at her, then shakes his head slightly. He looks around, his gaze skipping over the paintings. “Nothing is stolen, as far as I can see.”

“It wasn’t a painting.”

“This is… an art gallery.”

“I _know._ Believe me, I’m as confused as you are.”

They spend the next five minutes conferring with a guard who has seen nothing, misses nothing.

Romana tries again and again to formulate her feelings into something that sounds at least a little bit logical. No matter how it was put, ‘I saw a man that looked like van Gogh at the van Gogh exhibit and it was _wrong_ ’ won’t make sense. Was it really that much of a problem? Yes, in context, it was. But what context?

Dr Black straightens his glasses. His gaze follows something, and she turns to see what it is.

The man, the thief, the law-breaker! He’s leaving the gallery _again_ , exciting just like he did minutes ago. This time he’s got an arm around the woman, and van — the other man — is nowhere to be seen. It’s déjà vu, and still she’s certain it’s not, that it’s two separate events, that he’ll soon have left the museum twice.

She stares after them until a mere step or so on their part will obscure them from view, and then she runs.

“Miss!” cries Black after her.

She stops, at the top of the outside stairs. There’s nothing she can do now, she’s suddenly as certain of that as she was of the crime. She has to approach this matter in some other way. The guard stops next to her, touches her shoulder gently. “I think I’ve made a mistake,” she says.

She watches the pair descend the stairs, the woman wiping her cheeks every now and then, the man squeezing her shoulders. She watches them cross the pavement, enter a police box, the police box.

“What are they doing in there?” the guard asks.

Romana reaches into a pocket. Time to move on.

_Back, back, down, down… to another place and another time…_

 

 

**Colchester, 2010**

_She had checked for splinters, her hand floating in nothingness, and there had been a blue piece of wood in her hand when she had pulled it out. She let it go back into the crack._

_Then again, he was getting older, and overconfidence had always been the bane of her kin._

_“I can make you listen.”_

_Remember Gallifrey._

_She hasn’t had any answers yet._

She’s having a lazy afternoon in her hotel room. There had been a small fire in her flat, so she’s temporarily relocated here.

She sips her white coffee and fiddles with the hotel’s Wi-Fi. Watches some telly, hopes something fantasy-like will be on soon; one gets bored with the likeness of everyday life. She swears it feels like time moves slower than usual.

_There’s something, something… something that makes her feel like she on occasion does not look upon the world with two eyes but rather countless more, something trapped behind sticky mascara and shopping lists and botched highlights, behind broken heels and out of eggs and extra hours at work, behind cogs and…_

 

She goes to the pub to get some supper and has almost finished her pie when a gaggle of men in football kits swarm in. A moment later, someone taps her on the shoulder. “Sophie!”

“Hi! Are you finished?”

“Just now.”

“Then you’ve got to meet Craig’s lodger! He’s a bit odd, but so much fun!”

She follows Sophie, glad for the company. They head to the back, where a long, curved seat holds what appears to be the entire football team, and a handful of small tables in front of it hold of a remarkable amount of plates and glasses.

“Hi!” shouts Craig. He sits nearly in the middle of the group, waving to them. The rest of the team is generally not paying attention to her, except for the man sitting in the very middle. He wears a jacket over his shirt and waves furiously.

“Is that the bloke? Number 11?” asks Romana.

“How did you guess?” Sophie makes her way to them, squeezing between legs and tables and apologising constantly.

Romana takes a more direct route. It involves being rather heedless with people’s toes and elbowing an ounce or so out of the occasional full glass, but at least it’s not as much of a bother as Sophie’s way.

“Freddie! You can have Sophie’s old spot!” says Craig, pointing between himself and the man in tweed. Then he nudges the footballer to his left until he’s freed a place next to him. “Soph, you can sit here.”

Romana squeezes down in the offered spot. “Hey, Craig,” she says, clapping him on the shoulder, but he’s already laughing with Sophie.

She turns to the lodger instead. “Hi!” she says. “Freddie. A friend of Sophie’s and Craig’s. We used to work together.”

“I’m the Doctor,” he says, and invades what little personal space there is to be had by leaning forward and kissing her on both cheeks. “Isn’t this a fantastic place?”

“It’s certainly a crowded, warm and stuffy place, but that might just be the alcohol fumes talking.”

The Doctor grins. “So what do you… do?”

“I temp.” For some reason she’s thinking about Venice.

“Where?”

“Everywhere. Why sit still, huh? What do you do?”

“I’m an amateur, of everything!”

“Really? I’d have thought you were a Doctor?”

“I am. Of everything!”

Oh, well, apparently he doesn’t care to tell. Time to change the subject. “I read an interesting article on gravitational collapse the other day.” Well, that wasn’t the subject she’d had in mind, but it was what came out.

The Doctor narrows his eyes. “Of stars?”

“Yes. There was a new theory on —”

“Oh, come on!” whines Craig. “Don’t talk about things like that! I’ve got a headache already.” He sips from his pint.

“You can move if you don’t want to hear it,” says Romana. “And I hardly think that beer will improve your headache.”

Craig looks up at her. “What’s with you tonight?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” says the Doctor, eyeing her slightly, “We’ll talk about… football instead.” He looks out over the pub, not seeming very interested at all in talking about football.

“You don’t know,” says Romana. “It opens. The P…” Well, that word wouldn’t come out.

“I missed that last part, sorry!” he all but shouted. “You’re not speaking very loudly and I was listening in on that couple talking about food shopping. I thought it would pick up but it didn’t, it was very boring!”

The couple in question turn in their seats to look at him.

Romana nods to them and tries not to think about blushing. She feels a pressing need to continue the conversation about gravitational collapse and things similar to that. “Should we go someplace more silent?”

“What!” he bellows.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” she shouts.

“Um… I have to check. With my ear.” He slides down the seat, disappears under the table… and emerges on the other side, grinning, a moment later. “Just need to…” he points to his earpiece. “It’s all very normal.”

She watches him squeeze through the throng at the counter and disappear out the door, either not noticing or not caring about the looks people gave him.

She and the others sit there for hours longer, and she’s not specifically waiting for him… but still, she can’t help but note that he doesn’t return.

 

She’s packed all her bags and feels vaguely uneasy. She’s moving out of the hotel and back home tonight, and for some reason she isn’t really looking forward to it. It’s silly. It’s not as if she’s never coming back again.

She’s got a bit of time to spend, though, and heads for Aickman Road; Sophie has just returned.

Craig opens the door for her, smiles more easily than she’s ever seen before. He leads her into the living room, where Sophie, clad in a t-shirt with a photo print of herself holding a monkey, welcomes her with a hug.

Romana discards her coat and scarf and sinks down in an easy chair. “Something feels different,” she says, before she can stop herself.

“We’ve just redone the wallpaper,” says Craig. He and Sophie plop down on the sofa, wrapping their arms about one another. “There was some… rot.”

It must have been necessary. The house is infinitely more pleasant, now. “So… Tell me all about the trip!”

An hour later, after learning absolutely _all_ about the trip, she dares to ask, “What happened to the Doctor? He’s left, hasn’t he?”

“Why do you ask?” Craig narrows his eyes. His hand twitches a bit.

Sophie puts her hand over his, gives Romana a look.

“He had to go,” Craig continues. “He had stuff to do. You know how it is…Something worried him, someplace else. A little bit.”

“Oh. I hope it wasn’t anything serious.”

“Nah! He’ll be fine. He’s always… fine.”

_Something worried him._ Something worries Craig, too. Romana puts on a smile. “This wallpaper is amazing!”

Sophie grins. “Doesn’t it make you feel like you’re in the jungle?”

A while later, she slips into the kitchen to help herself to some water. _The Doctor rocks._ There’s a photo of him on the fridge.

And… there is a crack in their wall, behind the bin. A jagged, grinning mouth. She crouches, pushes the bin aside, traces the crack forlornly. There’s one just like it on her old fobwatch.

“Yeah,” says Craig, behind her. “That’s next on the list.” Craig’s got his hands in his trouser pockets, glances between Romana and the crack. Sophie puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll try, at least,” says Sophie.

Suddenly Romana feels like she’s very late, wonders if perhaps she’s got the checkout time wrong, needs to hurry back, needs to get started… She laughs, a purely autonomous response. “Good luck.”

She hugs them both goodbye.

_He was worried… One wouldn’t worry if it was one’s fault… then one would lament._

 

**Stonehenge, 102 AD**

She’s at the back of the crowd. She can’t bear to be closer. _No,_ she thinks.

The Pandorica has been opened, and is waiting for its prey. There is only its light and firelight. It is very quiet.

She’s had to curb the rather unsavoury urge that wanted to watch him be shut in. The same urge had pressed her to reveal how to contain him — she had managed to curb that one, too, thankfully. She’s cold-blooded, literally, and part of this conspiracy. The Alliance is born from fear and built on fear, and she is terrified. She fears her failed experiment, she fears this Silurian body, she fears her allies, she fears the Silence, she fears the end of all things and she fears for the Doctor.

He’s afraid, too. They’re all so afraid. And none of them understand.

They have to drag him, which is to be expected.

She tucks her elbows close, presses her claws into her palms, hopes against hope that this is another nightmare, a nightmare she’s having in another time, under another projection field. And she watches.

No, she has to stop them. He’s got to have the chance to defend himself. He should have the right to speak, to explain, to… She tries to move, but she’s frozen. She tries to shout, but her tongue won’t cooperate.

He’s in there now, inside the Pandorica. It’s almost too late. There’s a terrible storm approaching, she can feel it, but none of the others seem aware of it.

Her timepiece is breaking, she can feel it, the cogs ceasing to move, the field losing cohesion, the manipulator giving out. Only now, when it is too late, does her puppeteer release its hold. She remembers so many strange things now, so many times… So many trips, so many faces… The Multiform, Liz X, Daleks, van Gogh, Craig and Sophie.

It’s like stepping out of quicksand onto steel. The world turns itself inside out and her mind does the same. It breaks and reshapes itself, heals, hardens. So many trips and this was the only one she needed to make.

She feels the illusion of scales slip off her like water.

It’s not a nightmare. It’s reality, and may well be the last of it.

She has one chance to gather up all the pieces and fit them all together. This one chance. And then what? _Their_ evidence concurs; hers is inconclusive. She still has the same questions. What if it was, will be, has always been, _his_ fault? What if he stumbled? But he seems much the same, too much the same to make that sort of mistake… doesn’t he?

He pleads, or admonishes, or forgives, and she listens. He says it’s not him and she believes him.

She hasn’t got any answers, but it’s all brutally simple now -- it can’t be his fault because he’s _here_ with them and the terrible event is coming now, happening now, and he can’t cause it because he’s here… the TARDIS… it happens now, and all the time, everywhere, and they got it _wrong_.

He looks up, and she wonders if he can see her. Her blood running hot again, she picks up on his anxiety, her pulses attuning themselves to his. Too late.

“Listen to me!”

She feels it coming, the end of it… It cuts through _everything_ and finds every little part of her. It tears his last words from his lips and from her mind and from her hearts.

They cheer when the Pandorica closes. She hates them all.

They got it wrong.

 

There is nothing. And then, she’s in the Doctor’s TARDIS. It looks quite different, but it feels the same.

The Doctor is already there. He blinks. “Romana,” he states, terribly accepting.

“Doctor.”

They share a quick, careless hug.

“I should ignore that, shouldn’t I?” She nods to the other side of the console, where a jacketless Doctor and his companion play with a beach ball. “She has nice hair. I should have chosen her nuance.”

He purses his lips. “I like yours.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m not entirely sure I’m not hallucinating. You might be just a really vivid memory. With a new face. A very nice face, by the way.”

“I suppose yours is all right as well. Why would you remember me with a different face?”

“I don’t know, I’m unravelling.”

Romana does think about it, for a moment, for the sake of peace. “I think I’m probably real. Although, thanks to you, I’m unravelling too.”

The Doctor frowns. “Come on! Don’t want to confuse Amy.” He leads the way down a metal staircase, into a space beneath the console, where he plops down into some sort of swing. “Would you care to explain?”

Romana runs a hand along a hanging wire, and the TARDIS hums. Through the glass ceiling, which is also a floor, she can see the jacketless Doctor and the beach ball. “I’ve been studying the cracks, tracked them, tried to understand them. Yes, you were involved too, by default.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s the gist.”

“It’s too simple. Unless… yes.” He swings a bit. “You do realise you’ve probably been an agent of the Silence.”

“Of course, but I considered freedom paramount, and the Silence freed me. Don’t ask me how, it was… a wordless exchange. Besides, it’s gone now. This was cracked.” She holds up the belt, shows him the crack-less fobwatch. “I’m still here.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a belt, on which I have fastened a rather brilliant amalgamation of my fobwatch, a vortex manipulator, an field projector, a multiverse tracker and some other bits and bobs.”

“I’m impressed.”

She shrugs one shoulder, walks up to the swing and sits in his lap. “You’ve got a plan.”

“Of course I’ve got a plan.” He glances upward, where the giant ball just bounces on the glass, and Amy Pond yells with triumph.

Romana starts to disassemble the belt. The swing moves slowly, from side to side.

He puts his hands on her shoulders. “When we part, you need to make some noise, Romana.”

“I can do that.”

“Some proper noise.”

“I can do that.”

“Enough noise to-”

“I’ll do it!”

“Good. Do you plan on following me through my unwinding timestream?”

“It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. I’ve got at least one stop planned, as it is.”

“Are you done soon?”

“Should we go already?”

“I think it’s time.”

 

She appears in the middle of foliage, shoves waxy leaves out of her face. She removes her coat and drapes it over an arm. The remains of Sharon Pond’s shed are quite near, devoid of TARDIS.

There’s herself - her fobwatched self with the scarf and the wellies - clutching her head and groaning. “What happened?”

Romana helps her sit up, gives her the coat. “Let’s speed up this, shall we,” she reaches for the manipulator and programs it. The foliage becomes a greenish stretch of colour, a stagnant unmoving thing; and then it rustles, moves in the wind once again. She remembers thinking, while witnessing it as that human, _It’s just the same as before_. “But the garden isn’t,” she says, now, like she should.

Her self peers between a pair of twigs. “Why is she there?” she asks. “Has she locked herself out? I have to help her inside…”

Romana takes a look. The little red suitcase was out there now, and on it slept Amelia Pond. “Don’t worry, he’ll take care of her.”

“Who?”

“He.” Romana nods to thin air.

The Doctor appears almost exactly where she thought he would. He glances between them. “Oh, just look at you!”

“Quite pleased with the hair on that one.”

“Are you all right?” he asks her human self. He extends a hand and she lets him help her up. “Of course you are, you will be. I’m scaring you. Never mind me!”

“Don’t you wonder what happened to her?” asks Romana. It comes out rather more archly than she intended.

“I already know what happened. The watch-manipulator-whatever-it-is failed because of the approaching TARDIS, sending her into shock.”

“The _crashing_ TARDIS.”

“That wasn’t my fault. Well, it was. Except not really.”

“I’m phoning an ambulance,” Romana says, into thin air. “Do try to keep your mouth shut about this. I know you will, but I have to say it, you know.”

The Doctor pushes a clump of greenery aside. “I should go. I need to wake a little girl up and tell her to go to sleep.”

 

 

the end.


End file.
